The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

As an Iraq vet I think Ricks put a lot of good info in the book. Good insight into Petraeus and Odierno and the Bush administration. Good bird’s-eye view of the strategy in Iraq. He obviously did his homework. A little bit of an oversimplification of the humen dimension at work in the psychology of the Iraqi. What did the Iraqi on the street think before and after the Coalition invasion? How did this influence the fiasco of squandering the victorious invasion? Why didn’t they see us as liberators. I knew plenty of Iraqis that saw me as a liberator. I knew quite a few more that saw me as an infidel too. What needs did the surge satisfy in the Iraqi populace? He did touch briefly on some of the cultural aspects the surge addressed. But his book about the counterinsurgency skps over specifics on the ground that I know personally were transformational. Personal trust and honor transcends the Iraqi scene and that’s what Petraeus wrote about in his Counterinsurgency Manual. Great book! People should know more about what he wrote. It’s not what the press and politicians tell you about the Iraq war – whether left-leaning or right-leaning.

I’m please to report The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas E. Ricks did not cause me nearly the heartburn as his previous work on Iraq, Fiasco (my review). Don’t misconstrue that as criticism of the author: it is the facts of the matter, not the teller of those facts that causes my blood pressure to rise.

For many reasons I opposed the war in Iraq (hence the gastric distress), but after shattering the fabric of that country — a tenuous fabric holding in check three distrustful and vengeful groups: Kurds, Shia and Sunni — I felt we had an obligation to stay the course. My mother always said: you break it, you bought it. And boy, did we break Iraq.

From shortly after the ill-conceived invasion in 2003 to the arrival of General David Petraeus in 2007, the U.S. floundered in Iraq. An insurgency was ignited, sectarian groups squared off in what for all intents was a civil war, and our military tactics only made things worse. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis died or were injured, with the numbers increasing month by month, while the futility of Washington’s “strategy” was revealed.

Eschewing the heavy-handed tactics which were not working, Petraeus and his corps commander General Odierno, and their support staffs, used the hard-won surge of five brigades of additional troops to implement a classic counter-insurgency (COIN) approach whereby the people of Iraq were viewed as the prize to be won.

Ricks rightly calls the surge a tactical success — violence and deaths were radically reduced, but not eliminated — but grades it as incomplete overall as the strategic goal of fostering political reconciliation between Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups was not achieved. In fact, by paying former Sunni insurgents to stop fighting us and overlooking the ethnic cleansing of whole neighborhoods by Shia militias, the events of 2007 really represented a somewhat unsavory gamble that could have blown up in our face at any time, and still might. Realpolitik, indeed.

It is interesting to note, too, that as the level of violence in Iraq began to come down, events in the U.S. began to overshadow public interest, notably the presidential election and financial meltdown. One shudders to think what would have happened if the shift to COIN operations had not worked and a wartime loss, divisive election and crippling recession occurred simultaneously.

Some reviewers have noted the somewhat pessimistic view of many quoted in the book that US presence in Iraq would likely continue for decades is out of step with the reality of our withdrawal in 2011. Realize this book was published early in 2009 (although the Afterword appears to have been included later in the year), and therefore it is a point in time and doubtless those interviewed were giving their best estimate at the time.

Ricks’ prose is sharp and to the point, and I’d argue the point with those reviewers who think there was a “liberal bias” showing through. Facts are facts, and Ricks sticks to the facts in his reporting but through interviews with key persons and experts all sides of the political spectrum are aired. At the risk of producing groans, I’d say it is fair and balanced. The Gamble is an important addition to understanding the events of that period and I highly recommend it.

Thomas Ricks’ “The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008” is an excellent, well-researched, and well-told account of how the now-vaunted surge turned around the Iraq War. Ricks had access to General Petraeus, General Odierno, many of their key staff, and used their insights – along with media and journal articles and unclassified after action reports – to tell his story.

Ricks’ story is that the surge (adding significant additional combat forces to Iraq) concept wasn’t the consensus plan of the military but was instead championed by a small group of officers and some academics in the defense establishment. It took the intervention of a retired Army four-star general to bypass Secretary Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sell the surge to the White House. This contradicts some of the claims in Bob Woodward’s “The War Within” that the idea of the surge was originally hatched in the White House.

But Ricks goes on to explain how the true genius of the surge wasn’t the addition of additional combat troops, it was a change in tactics and outlook. The soldiers got out of their vehicles, patrolled dismounted, and lived among the Iraqis – they no longer “commuted” to the fight and then returned to their bases at night. (As an aside, I observed in 2004 on the ground in Iraq that the emphasis on force protection and unwillingness to take risks among the Iraqi people was damaging to the mission.) And once the soldiers cleared and occupied an area, they were to hold it. This change in tactics was partly the result of the new counterinsurgency manual produced by General Petraeus in late 2006, and it was enabled by the surge in combat troops. At the higher levels, the military engaged the Iraqi tribes and Sunni militias and co-opted them, often with payments and sometimes behind the back of the Iraqi and US governments, in an effort to eliminate, but not necessarily through firepower, enemies to the peace and security in Iraq.

And while Ricks lauds the success of the surge, he is quick to point out its weaknesses and risks: although it brought relative peace and security to Iraq (after an initial increase in fighting), it did not move the political process forward. The surge also, by appealing to the tribes and militias, made it more likely that they’ll remain powerful extra-political forces in Iraq even as the political process moves forward.

Because this book was written so soon after the incidents, and is based heavily on media accounts, it will serve as a good first draft of history. It is also not the definitive history of the surge because it gives the view from the top in Iraq, then tiny slices of the war on the ground, and never gives a full accounting of the brigades and divisions involved or their areas of operation.

But my biggest criticism is that many of the Ricks’s conclusions are already out of date: he claims that we are at the mid-point of the Iraq War and expects tens of thousands of troops to remain in Iraq through 2015 or even later. However, his narrative includes events in November 2008, just a month before the Status of Forces Agreement was signed requiring all US forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011 – a provision of the agreement that was being debated openly before November 2008. Ricks also knew about Obama’s promises to have all troops out of Iraq within 16 months but never really addressed this possible chain of events (clarified by President Obama’s recent announcement to remove all combat troops by August 2010 and the remained out by the end of 2011). While it is certainly difficult to release a book during a time of rapid change in the subject, holding publication of the book a couple of key months would have allowed him to address these issues.

This is an extremely informative and engaging book. Ricks takes up where he left off with “Fiasco,” shows that the American military can adapt and overcome, and highlights the personalities who made this happen. He does this in an even-handed manner that highlights the success of the surge but points out its weaknesses. Anyone with any interest in current events, the war in Iraq, or the military should read this book for a much fuller understanding of the Iraq War.

An eye opening account of the complexities behind the Iraq was and the subsequent COIN lead by General Petraeus

Very readable – gets behind the headlines to really tell what actually happened, often in the main players’ words. I was serving in the Mid East in 2004 & this is a great eye-opener.

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